


Widow's Weeds III.5 – Interlude in the Underworld

by BardicRaven



Series: Arrow - Widow's Weeds [4]
Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Afterlife, Angst, Canonical Character Death, Episode: s03e09 The Climb, Gen, Ghosts, Irritated!Author-fic, John Diggle - minor role, Leadership, Paranormal, Paranormal Phenomena, Roy Harper - minor role, Team Arrow, Team Dynamics, Teamwork
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-17
Updated: 2014-12-17
Packaged: 2018-03-02 01:07:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2794199
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BardicRaven/pseuds/BardicRaven
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ghostly rememberings....</p>
            </blockquote>





	Widow's Weeds III.5 – Interlude in the Underworld

**Author's Note:**

>     _Man's timid heart is bursting with the things he must not say,_  
>      _For the Woman that God gave him isn't his to give away;_  
>      _But when hunter meets with husband, each confirms the other's tale—_  
>      _The female of the species is more deadly than the male._
> 
> ##### -Rudyard Kipling, The Female of the Species

***********

_**Where's there's life there's hope, after all, and where there's hope, there just might be life.**_

Perhaps it was the force of Felicity's love.

Perhaps it was his own desire to protect those he loved – his sister, Felicity, the rest of his team.

Perhaps it was the ties given by Ra's al Ghul's blessing as he died.

Perhaps it was merely the whim of an uncaring Universe.

Whatever the reason, the energy-field that had been Oliver Queen in life found itself caught between life and death, living in a world that was neither the world he had been born into nor yet the one to which he would ultimately Journey when this life was fully done.

A world where thought ruled, where whim manifested itself as reality. And yet... the one desire he remembered having, to return home to the one who loved him enough to let him go, that was the one thing he could not manage to achieve.

Yes, he went back. He saw her tears, shed only in the privacy of her own apartment. Powerless to do anything about them, he raged at his own impotence. If she'd been more aware, she would have heard the sound of the glass moving. As it was, she attributed its movement to her own lack of focus.

He watched as she took the leadership of his team, forced them to continue his mission, his Dream, even as they all began to realize that he was not going to be coming back to continue it in person.

He did all that, but try as he might, he could not pierce the Veil between them. He raged, he fought, he even begged a God he hadn't believed in for a very long time to release him.

Nothing. Except, not quite nothing. There were signs, subtle, barely perceptible, easy to miss. Felicity had missed the glass, but there were other things that she could not dismiss quite so easily. Strange sounds. Items that moved, ever so slightly, on their own, beyond the realm of vibration from the nightclub above. Cold spots that floated randomly through the room, more than merely the hazards of working in a tricked-out basement. And above all, some indefinable sense of Oliver-ness that hadn't been there since he'd left.

She didn't tell any of the others – whether they believed her or not, they'd think she was cracking under the strain, and her leadership felt tenuous at best, without straining it with tales of ghostly hauntings by their former leader.

But in her own heart, she held out hope.

And where there is hope, there is life.


End file.
